Alongside, and inexorably linked with, the ecclesiastical establishment, the law was one of the main social bonds that shaped and directed the interactions of day-to-day life in medieval and early modern times. Exploring the boundaries of the law as they existed and as they have been perceived by historians, this volumes offers wide-ranging insight into a key aspect of European society.

"An introduction to the rich history of criminal justice charting all its main developments from the dooms of Anglo-Saxon times to the rise of the Common Law, struggles for political, legislative and judicial ascendency and the formation of the innovative Criminal Justice System of today." "The book looks at the Rule of Law, the development of the criminal courts and the people who work in them, police forces, the jury, judges, magistrates, crime and punishment. It deals with all the iconic events of criminal justice history and reform to show how criminal justice evolved." --Book Jacket.

After the murder of Edmund Ironside in 1016, Canute the Dane seized the crown of Wessex, banishing Edmund's small sons, Edmund and Edward, to Sweden with a `letter of death'.However, their lives were spared and the continental wanderings of the Anglo-Saxon princes began. Gabriel Ronay fills in the years of their exile concluding with Edward's death forty years later, just forty-eight hours after his triumphant return to England. When Edward Ironside was murdered in 1016, Canute the Dane seized the crown of Wessex. The following year, conscious of the threat posed to his rule by Edmund's small sons, Edmund and Edward Ætheling, he banished them to Sweden, with a `letter of death'. The Swedish king, however, spared their lives, and the Continental wanderings of the Anglo-Saxon princes began; their uncertain fate greatly exercised the minds of contemporary English chroniclers. Forty years later the ageing, childless Edward the Confessor learned that his nephew Edward was living in Hungary; he invited him to return home, casting him in a crucial role in the struggle to avert a Norman takeover, but forty-eight hours after his triumphant homecoming he was dead, and the events that were to lead to the Norman conquest of 1066 were set in motion. Drawing on sources from as far afield as Iceland and Kievan Russia, this account of the extraordinary years of the princes' exile is a story stranger than fiction, unravelled by Gabriel Ronay with all the excitement of a modern-day crime study. GABRIEL RONAY wrote for The Times for many years. He was born in Transylvania, and studied at the universities of Budapest and Edinburgh. He came to Britain after the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

There are several reasons why the chronicle is particularly suited as the topic of a yearbook. In the first place there is its ubiquity: all over Europe and throughout the Middle Ages chronicles were written, both in Latin and in the vernacular, and not only in Europe but also in the countries neighbouring on it, like those of the Arabic world. Secondly, all chronicles raise such questions as by whom, for whom, or for what purpose were they written, how do they reconstruct the past, what determined the choice of verse or prose, or what kind of literary influences are discernable in them. Finally, many chronicles have been beautifully illuminated, and the relation between text and image leads to a wholly different set of questions. The yearbook The Medieval Chronicle aims to provide a representative survey of the on-going research in the field of chronicle studies, illustrated by examples from specific chronicles from a wide variety of countries, periods and cultural backgrounds. The Medieval Chronicle is published in cooperation with the Medieval Chronicle Society.